Worst travel writing jobs 002: “English language writers”

Welcome to the second installment of my new series “worst travel writing jobs,” where I basically write a bunch of droll, cheap-shot comments in response to terrible travel writer job postings, which, incidentally, is super easy and takes only a fraction of the time of writing a proper blog post!

This nugget of a travel writer job post was left for me in the comments of the first “worst travel writing jobs” post, which was awesome and saved me some time, so I encourage others to do the same. For the children.

English Writer for Travel Articles (Long Term)

“Long term”?!? Oh, hell yeah! Hello travel writing career! Hang on a sec while I go quit my day job by setting my boss’ hair on fire. There’s no way that’ll come back to haunt me now that I have this sweet ass long term gig.

We are looking for English language writers to write travel articles.

Yeah, you already said that. I’m all-in, baby! Just point me in the direction of the free hotel suite so I can get to work.

We will provide keywords and other Writer’s guidelines.

Keywords? How does that work? So, I’m not actually writing? And why did you capitalize ‘writer’s’? I wonder if it’s too late to extinguish my boss’ hair fire.

Length: 450+ words

That’s it? Shit bro, I write longer posts than that on my fantasy baseball discussion board. And I do that for FREE. This is gonna be a cinch!

Language: English

Of course.

Niche: Travel

You spelled ‘nice’ wrong, dummy.

Difficulty: Location-based research needed

Location-based research? So, this isn’t a desk job? I need to actually visit all these places? Well, that shouldn’t a problem since I’m getting all my travel comped and you reimburse expenses, right? Because no one in their right mind would expect me to pay for my travel out-of-pocket on what I’m sure is your very generous per-article fee.

SEO optimized: Keyword usage is needed (Provided)

I’m still not following this ‘keyword’ thing. So, you give me a list of words and I have to write other words around those words? That sounds like hell.

Subtitles: Needed

No deal. I hate movies with subtitles.

Volume: We will start with a sample and 10 articles per batch order within two days.

Soooo, if I understand this correctly, you would like me to crank out 4,500 (or more) words in 48 hours, even though the generally accepted (and sometimes awfully ambitious) industry per-day average is 2,000 words? It’s cool if I plagiarize, right? Because otherwise there’s no way this is possible without going completely insane in just a few weeks.

Rate: $30 per batch of 10 articles ($3 each)

The fuck?? So, for the privilege of working myself into crazy jail, you’re going to pay me nearly $0.007 per word? Yeah, lemme just quick pre-order my straitjacket. (Not that it’ll do any good.)

We would want to gradually increase the quantity of articles to be written if you are able to provide quality articles in a long run.

So, the un-fucking-believable workload you’re asking for is just the starting point? Damn, my straitjacket is gonna need a straitjacket.

Thank you.

You’re welcome, Satan. Your visits to the terrestrial world are always such a hoot.

Last year when trying to land some freelance work I saw this for all kinds of industries. This is a step down from sending it to countries where English is the second language and which never reads the same as an actual native-English piece would.

They must get a lot of nibbles though– judging by the sheer volume of those ads circulating. Though no professional writer would even bother to get half-way through the ad.